The Brief

You may not know Jing Gao by name, but there's a good chance you've come across a jar of her chili crisp Fly By Jing, featuring its hypercharged label resembling a contemporary art piece. It could have caught your eye while perusing the aisles at a local big box store, an occasional boutique shop, or on a friend's kitchen counter.

And if it's not on your counter or in your pantry, it should be.

Certain legacy brands such as Lao Gan Ma have dominated the chili crisp marketplace internationally since the '80s, and in recent years homegrown players such as Momofuku Chili Crisp by David Chang and Boon by Max Boonthanakit have cropped up with their own deliciously sludgy takes on chili crisp.

But, in terms of value and taste, Fly By Jing's chili crisp has continued to impress yours truly so much that I always make sure I have a jar on hand.

After buying chili crisps regularly for the better part of a decade, I've become increasingly dependent on them in my arsenal of kitchen ingredients, using them for everything from frying eggs to pasta sauces. While I'm a big fan of the spicy taste and crunchy flavors, the quality of the sauce is that it never dries out, making it a real winner.

For the uninitiated, chili crisp is an essential Asian hot sauce. But it's in its own category compared to a bottle of Tapatio or Tabasco. The ingredients comprise dried chilies, aromatics, and fermented black beans submerged in chili oil, resulting in a spicy, umami-rich flavor with a textured, crunch-laden bite.

The central spice ingredient is the Sichuan pepper, known for its unique flavor profile that features a tingling, almost numbing effect on the taste buds. It can be found in various dishes, including mapo tofu, dan dan noodles, and toothpick cumin lamb.

One of the most exciting aspects about each chili crisp recipe is that every chef and sauce maker likes to put their spin on it.

Within the last decade, chili crisp has become ubiquitous across the modern American palate. Fly by Jing, ($14), is a standout in the marketplace for more than just its quality and taste: Gao is the only AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) female condiment founder in Los Angeles.

After Gao and I began following each other on Instagram, I witnessed the rapid growth of her Fly By Jing company, ascending from a small start-up to a leader in the condiment industry.

So when an opportunity to speak to Gao came up, I jumped at the chance to learn more about the journey behind her spectacular chili crisp.

Where it all began

Born in Chengdu, China, Gao spent her formative years moving throughout Europe and Canada. Her foray into food began as a chef and restaurateur in China, having previously worked in the tech industry in China and other parts of Asia. Upon switching to pursue her passion for food, she began hosting a series of underground supper clubs in Shanghai, where she came up with the name Fly By Jing.

In 2018, Gao left the chef life and moved to Los Angeles, where she rented an Airbnb, armed with a mission to start her own condiment company, motivated by what she describes as "a desire to share flavors and make them more accessible to western consumers."

Fly By Jing's chili crisp is good on just about everything, any place you'd like a little more spice. There are no rules.

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Courtesy of Fly By Jing

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Driven by a mission

Yes, there are places in L.A. like Bistro Na and Majordomo where Asian food is considered haute cuisine. But those are the exceptions in Gao's experience: She says she believes that in the past, to many mainstream American tastebuds, Chinese food and its corresponding cuisines were seen as cheap and plentiful.

"There was this accepted belief that Chinese food is dirty, cheap, unhealthy, and not worth paying for,” she told me, adding, “And so, of course, anyone who manufactures in China would never export anything of quality because people are told that no one's willing to pay more than a dollar or two for Chinese food."

It's part of the assumption that food from foreign countries, especially non-European companies, should be inexpensive. Similar attitudes stem back to the 19th century when Chinese immigrants first arrived in the Americas during the Gold Rush and were seen as inferior to their white counterparts. It's a similar fate to Mexican food, and the perception in some corners that a taco shouldn't cost more than $5.

So, when starting her condiment company, quality was essential to Gao, who wanted to subvert any Westernized assumptions surrounding Chinese food.

An example that Gao uses during our conversation illustrates this fact, detailing how she sourced the condiment's tribute pepper, a single-origin pepper only grown in one place in the world, located about four hours away by car from Chengdu. Gao detailed for me how she spent years studying and building relationships with the farmers who grow the pepper on a single plot of land, and how it's only harvested once a year.

How she changed the narrative

To Gao, chili crisp was the perfect vehicle for broadening people's sense of taste due to its popularity in China and because, as she puts it, "it's good on everything."

Running a successful Kickstarter campaign allowed Gao to establish the financial footing needed to get the company off the ground. After gaining a viral appeal, selling her chili crisp online eventually led to larger retailers like Costco and Target reaching out to stock her jars.

Traditional usages of chili crisp tend to be found in dishes such as noodles, soup, or vegetables. But as the condiment's popularity has recently grown here in the United States, it's not uncommon to see it used on pasta, pizza, salads, ice cream — and even donuts.

Fly By Jing CEO and founder Jing Gao wants to challenge the notion of how Americans think about Chinese food.

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Courtesy of Fly By Jing

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As her chili crisp empire has grown, so have the business opportunities.

Most recently, she collaborated on a pineapple passion fruit Sichuan chili crisp donut for Holy Grail Donuts, the Hawaiian taro donut company with a cult-like following, with outposts in Santa Monica and Larchmont Village. The made-to-order donut is fried in coconut oil, then covered in a tropical fruit glaze, and finishes off with a smack of heat from the chili crisp.

Gao has also landed similar partnerships with Panda Express, for a limited spicy Wagyu beef dumplings and Shake Shack, which featured a burger and chicken sandwich drizzled with some of Gao's signature sauces, along with a successful collaboration with a tinned fish company of the moment, Fishwife, for a smoked salmon with chili crisp that seemed to be on everyone's table last year. Gao's also published a cookbook, "The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp: Spicy Recipes and Stories from Fly By Jing's Kitchen," in 2023.

Where she's headed next

Like the many uses of her chili crisp, Gao subverts categorization as she expands her brand beyond chili crisp. In addition to a line of saucy condiments, Fly By Jing also offers vinaigrettes, chili oils, dry spice mixes, and a hot pot starter kit.

Most recently, she's expanded to an actual market and cafe space.

Partnering with lifestyle influencer Stephanie Liu Hjelmeseth, the cafe space, located in the neighborhood of Larchmont Village, Suá Superette, boasts an all-day menu that showcases a variety of organic grab-and-go items, all inspired by Sichuan-style fare and flavors, reimagined.

In addition to the various menu items at Suá Superette, there's a also a variety of Fly By Jing products you can stock up on.

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Courtesy of Fly By Jing

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Inside the space, among the minimalist decor, diners can dig into a variety of dishes that include a vegan mapo tofu made with wild mushrooms, spicy chili-and-cumin grass-fed beef wraps, and cold soba noodles tossed in a sunbutter sesame dressing, to name a few.

The fluidity of cultures comes naturally to Gao, having spent most of her life abroad before calling Los Angeles her home. Throughout her experiences, Jing wanted to offer a product that would appeal to like-minded consumers looking to spice up their lives, a spoonful of chili crisp at a time.

With Suá, a throughline is coming into sharper focus. Gao describes the common thread: "A similar philosophy that's rooted in tradition, but made for the way we eat today, it's modern."

The Trump administration says it’s planning to freeze about $10 billion in federal support for needy families in California and four other Democrat-run states, as the president announced an investigation into unspecified fraud in California.

The plans come on the heels of the Trump administration announcing a freeze on all federal payments for child care in Minnesota, citing fraud allegations against daycare centers in the state.

The state’s Democrat governor, Tim Walz — who ran for vice president against Donald Trump’s ticket in 2024 — announced Monday he was dropping out of running for reelection. He pointed to fraud against the state, saying it’s a real issue while alleging Trump and his allies were “seeking to take advantage of the crisis.”

On Monday, the New York Post reported that the administration was expanding the funding freeze to include California and three other Democrat-led states, in addition to Minnesota. Unnamed federal officials cited “concerns that the benefits were fraudulently funneled to non-citizens,” The Post reported.

Early Tuesday, President Trump alleged that corruption in California is worse than Minnesota and announced an investigation.

“California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible??? The Fraud Investigation of California has begun. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

He did not specify what alleged fraud was being examined in the Golden State.

LAist has reached out to the White House to ask what the president’s fraud concerns are in California and to request an interview with the president.

“For too long, Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” said an emailed statement from Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the federal childcare funds.

“Under the Trump administration, we are ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes. We will ensure these states are following the law and protecting hard-earned taxpayer money.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office disputed Trump’s claim on social media, arguing that since taking office, the governor has blocked $125 billion in fraud and arrested “criminal parasites leaching off of taxpayers.”

Criminal fraud cases in CA appear to be rare for this program

Defrauding federally funded programs is a crime — and one LAist has investigated, leading to one of the largest such criminal cases in recent years against a California elected official, which surrounded meal funds.

When it comes to the federal childcare funds that are being frozen, the dollar amount of fraud alleged in criminal cases appears to be a tiny fraction of the overall program’s spending in California.

A search of thousands of news releases by all four federal prosecutor offices in California, going back more than a decade, found a total of one criminal case where the press releases referenced childcare benefits.

That case, brought in 2023, alleged four men stole $3.7 million in federal childcare benefits through fraudulent requests to a San Diego organization that distributed the funds. All four pleaded guilty, with one defendant sentenced to 27 months in prison and others sentenced to other terms, according to authorities.

It appears to be equivalent to one one-hundredth of 1% of all the childcare funding California has received over the past decade-plus covered by the prosecution press release search.

Potential impact on California families

The plans call for California, Minnesota, New York, Illinois and Colorado to lose about $7 billion in cash assistance for households with children, almost $2.4 billion to care for children of working parents, and about $870 million for social services grants that mostly benefit children at risk, according to unnamed federal officials speaking to the New York Times and New York Post.

In the largest category of funding, California receives $3.7 billion per year. The program is known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

 ”It's very clear that a freeze of those funds would be very damaging to the children, families, and providers of California,” said Stacy Lee, who oversees early childhood initiatives "at Children Now, an advocacy group for children in California.

 ”It is a significant portion of our funds and will impact families and children and providers across the whole state,” she added. “It would be devastating, in no uncertain terms.”

About 270,000 people are served by the TANF program in L.A. County — about 200,000 of whom are children, according to the county Department of Public Social Services.

“Any pause in funding for their cash benefits – which average $1000/month - would be devastating to these families,” said DPSS chief of staff Nick Ippolito.

Ippolito said the department has a robust fraud prevention and 170-person investigations team, and takes allegations “very seriously.”

It remains to be seen whether the funding freeze will end up in court. The state, as well as major cities and counties in California, has sued to ask judges to halt funding freezes or new requirements placed by the Trump administration. L.A. city officials say they’ve had success with that, including shielding more than $600 million in federal grant funding to the city last year.

A union representing California childcare workers said the funding freeze would harm low-income families.

“These threats need to be called out for what they are: direct threats on working families of all backgrounds who rely on access to quality, affordable child care in their communities to go to work every day supporting, and growing our economy,” said Max Arias, chairperson for the Child Care Providers United, which says it represents more than 70,000 child care workers across the state who care for kids in their homes.

“Funding freezes, even when intended to be temporary, will be devastating — resulting in families losing access to care and working parents facing the devastating choice of keeping their children safe or paying their bills.”

Federal officials planned to send letters to the affected states Monday about the planned funding pauses, the New York Post reported. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, state officials said they haven’t gotten any official notification of the funding freeze plans.

“The California Department of Social Services administers child care programs that help working families afford safe, reliable care for their children — so parents can go to work, support their families, and contribute to their communities,” said a statement from California Department of Social Services spokesperson Jason Montiel.

“These funds are critical for working families across California. We take fraud seriously, and CDSS has received no information from the federal government indicating any freeze, pause, or suspension of federal child care funding.”

Housing officials in the city of Los Angeles say a pandemic-era voucher program is set to run out of money later this year, putting thousands of renters at risk of homelessness.

The federal Emergency Housing Voucher program was launched in 2021 as a way to get vulnerable people off the streets and into housing during the COVID-19 crisis. The city of L.A. received more than 3,300 of the vouchers.

With federal funding now running out, the city is preparing to wind down the program. On Monday the city’s housing authority said it had told 2,760 tenant households and 1,700 landlords that unless new funding is found, vouchers will expire by November or December of this year.

“We are providing this notice nearly a year in advance because our families deserve the respect of time to prepare, but this is not a notice of resignation,” said L.A. Housing Authority President Lourdes Castro Ramírez said in a news release. “We are exhausting every avenue — at the local, state and federal levels — to bridge this funding gap.”

The Housing Authority said each household using a voucher had an average of 1.58 members. That puts more than 4,000 Angelenos at risk of losing their housing later this year.

Homelessness progress could be reversed

Congress originally intended the program to continue through 2030, but last year, the Trump administration announced funding would end sooner. The program’s demise risks reversing L.A.’s reported progress at stemming the rise of homelessness.

After years of steady increases, the city has registered slight reductions in the number of people experiencing homelessness for the past two years. In 2023, the region’s homeless services authority reported 46,260 people experiencing homelessness in the city of L.A. By 2025, that number had fallen to 43,695.

The accuracy of those official counts has been questioned by local researchers, but elected officials have cheered the numbers as a sign that the tide is turning in addressing one of L.A.’s most vexing problems.

With thousands of renters now at risk of losing a key resource helping them afford the city’s high rents, sharp increases in homelessness could be on the horizon, said Mike Feuer, a senior policy advisor with the Inner City Law Center.

“They're going to fall into homelessness, and they're going to increase L.A.'s homeless population by almost 10%,” Feuer said. “Those are the implications of what the Trump administration is doing.”

Voucher holders have low incomes; many have kids

According to L.A.’s Housing Authority, about 1-in-4 voucher holders has children and 1-in-5 is elderly. And about 40% are disabled. These households have an average income of less than $14,000 per year, and they receive an average of $1,789 per month in rental subsidy while paying about $350 out of their own pockets.

The loss of federal funding for Emergency Housing Vouchers is distinct from the issues facing renters using Housing Choice Vouchers, another federally funded program often referred to as Section 8. Existing vouchers in the Section 8 program have continued to be funded, but federal funding reductions have caused city officials to cut the amount of rent new vouchers in that program can cover by 10%.

L.A. Housing Authority officials said they have dedicated staff reaching out to tenants to explore other housing resources that might keep them housed after the vouchers expire.

Manuel Villagomez, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles specializing in subsidized housing, said with city and state budgets strapped, tenant advocates are not counting on California to find alternative funding sources to continue the program.

“It seems like it's a tragedy in the making,” Villagomez said. “We're preparing for the worst.”